Vincent J. Curtis
19 Nov 2015
You have to hand to the Hamilton Spectator, they are unabashedly elitist. In an editorial of this date, the Spectator offered that the "Long-form census is annoying but necessary." The editorial proclaimed, "...the long-form census is the best tool we have to make evidence-based, people-centric public policy decisions. Canada Pension Plan, employment insurance, Old Age Security, public transit, public health investment, education and social service - these are just a few of the areas benefiting from the best possible data. Lack of information means deteriorating data, and inadequate data means bad decisions....There is really no credible, logical argument against the benefits of better data. And yet a sizable percentage of us remain adamantly opposed to the mandatory census, which explains why the Harper government's decision was unpopular in the academic, science, and public policy world, but quite the opposite in the land of broader public opinion....the sad result of [Harper's] decision is all the data we would have had for the decade in between is gone. We don't get another chance at it. That's tragic."
Winston S. Churchill once remarked that, "in a democracy you must occasionally defer to the wishes of other people."
The Spectator is saying that you stupid people who pay for this democracy should shut up and do what your betters tell you to do, because you don't know what's good for you. The real folly of the piece lies in the assumption that better data leads to better decisions. This is a dialectical argument, which means that common sense leads us to accept that it is generally true. But it ain't always so. The assumption does not conceive that there may be occasions when the democratic majority don't want the government to be making certain kinds of decisions at all, and depriving it of data is a means of preventing it from doing so. One thing the government can't do is sell the data to private parties for profit, very detailed marketing data that the private parties cannot get cheaply in any other way.
Anyhow, the Spectator sides with those who think the long-form census with the power of government coercion behind it is just dandy and there are no respectable arguments on the other side.
Or maybe there are:
The Spectator can hardly be regarded as a defender of
Canadian freedoms. Its justification of the long form census is the case
in point.
Several years ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper got himself
condemned as being anti-science over the long form census. Harper moved
to protect Canadians from bureaucrats whom many thought abused the coercive
powers granted to them by the government. These bureaucrats asked too
many intrusive questions concerning citizens’ private lives that many people
thought the government had no business asking about. The bureaucrats
believed that because Canadians answered the questions under threat of fines
and imprisonment, they would get truthful answers. Supporters of limited
government were concerned about the scope of the long form census, and the
Conservative government responded in accordance with those beliefs. It
limited the scope, and deprived the bureaucrats of the comfort of believing
that coercive power meant truth in answering. Depriving bureaucrats of
their coercive power was condemned as “anti-science.”
I believe in limited government. I oppose tax
increases and new government expenditures because they increase the power of
government. The presumption of the intrusive long form census is that the
government will employ power to implement decisions that, in new and creative
ways, increase the power and scope of government based upon the results of that
census. The Liberal party believes in a large and powerful government,
and so it naturally re-introduced the long form census, and will likely make it
punishable not to fully answer it.
One would think that re-imposing coercion would be
celebrated as being “pro-science.” It would be foolish, however, to
think so. While statistics is a science, sociology is not, and the
products of the science are going to be fed into a non-science to produce
government policy. As polling firms are now discovering, private citizens
no longer feel compelled to tell the truth to pollsters, with the result that
polling numbers are skewed and useless. People may come to realize that
the likelihood of their actually being punished by submitted false information
on the long-form census is negligible, and might just spoof the census for the
joy of being mischievous.
Successful democratic government requires the consent and
cooperation of the people. The new Trudeau government would be wise to
consider the decision Stephen Harper made in respect of the census before it
gets too presumptuous about its mandate to govern.
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